


Luck's Labor's Found

by in_lighter_ink



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Cabin Pressure Exchange, Gen, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 04:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_lighter_ink/pseuds/in_lighter_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a reason Martin has such bad luck: he takes the bad luck from others and makes them have good luck instead. Arthur realizes this and decides to try and give Martin all manner of good luck charms to try and help him keep a little luck for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luck's Labor's Found

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks and apologies to Terry Pratchett. Written for itsonlyburning.

Depending on your point of view, it begins either with the mythological turn of a metaphorical wheel, a Ford Transit van with a transmission problem, or the day Arthur Shappey became a man with a plan. 

It ends with a rabbit called Bluebell.

**

Every few generations (not every one, or every other, or even every seven: she doesn't like to get bogged down in routine) she throws a die or spins a wheel or sometimes just spins herself, eyes closed, and points. She chooses. Some for good, some for bad. It's a different number every year, and some years are more balanced than others. 

The ones she's chosen go about their lives, always impacting the lives of others just a little more than the ordinary person. Most don't cotton on that it's her doing and not their own.

In 1978, she chooses Martin Crieff.

**

"No! Oh, God, no." 

Martin tried the key again, and again was treated to a high-pitched whirr instead of the engine turning over.

"Please, please, please," he begged, petting the steering wheel as though appealing to the van's softer side would make it start.

Sometimes it worked, and the van would screech into life, and Martin would be able to breathe a little easier.

Today was not one of those days. 

He tried once more. This time, there was barely even a cough from under the bonnet. There was nothing for it: he was going to be late to the airfield, and he'd have to phone someone for a ride. That someone was going to have to be Douglas, since he was the least likely to be there already. He'd be hearing about it for weeks afterward. 

He wasn't even going to think about how he would be able to afford to fix whatever had gone wrong with the van this time.

Martin hit his head on the steering wheel as he fumbled for his mobile. 

The night before, Anna Ramamurthy, second-year student at Fitton Ag and Parkside Terrace resident, had saved her twenty-page final essay (due the next day) to a memory stick moments before her computer's hard drive crashed.

It was not a coincidence.

**

In a small plane in the air over -- probably it was Cameroon, or maybe Ghana -- Arthur Shappey was looking thoughtful. 

Some would say that this was never a good sign, but Arthur knew better than to listen to those people.

He was just about to hatch a plan. It would be a _brilliant_ plan. 

On the other side of the flight deck door, a pilot was worrying. Well, this particular pilot was always a bit worried, but today he was more worried than usual. And he hadn't even seen Arthur's thoughtful look yet.

He would soon enough, for he was the object of Arthur's fledgling plan.

It had to be said that Martin (for he was, of course, the nervous pilot in question) was justified in his worries. The day had, after all, been a relatively good one. Mostly. The trip across Spain in a baggage cart was still fresh in his mind -- and on his skin, if stale sweat and traces of sunglass lens could be said to be fresh.

(The other pilot would never admit to such a thing as being worried, even though he frequently was. But that's a different story, which requires a different cast of personified fears and hopes.)

But good days never lasted very long.

"Graeme Garden."

"Douglas."

"You wish to challenge Mr. Garden's status as an alliteratively named person?"

"No, no, obviously you're right. It's just… Has Arthur seemed a bit quiet since we took off?"

"Been missing his dulcet tones and the inane melodies with which they grace the flight deck, have you, Martin?"

"That's not really what I meant. It's just," Martin hesitated. "It's just, he's not burst in asking about what sound a hedgehog makes in a while, and... Well. It's never good when Arthur's quiet, is it? Leads to things like surprising rice and the time he tried to make cupcakes."

"Oh, Martin. I thought we had agreed never to speak of Vancouver. Yes, you have a point, I grant. I'd rather not find myself in South Africa, a victim of Arthur's culinary exploits. Oh, Arthur?" he singsonged, pressing the cabin address button.

"Yeah, chaps?" came the prompt response.

"Everything all right in the cabin?"

"Um, yeah. I think so. Hold on a sec. _Mum?_ " it was muffled as Arthur called back into the cabin, " _is everything... oh. Okay._ She says it's all fine, but it will be even more fine once we land and she can post some pictures of Douglas on the internet. What sort of photos, Douglas?"

Douglas clenched his jaw as visions of soapy BMWs danced in his mind.

**

In a little mythological pocket of reality, a wheel turns, spins between two poles, then comes to settle exactly between them. There would be difficulties with the image uploader Carolyn always used. She would print out the photos later, but they would go no farther than to decorate the walls of a portacabin in Fitton.

The hole in the knee of Martin's favorite jeans had already appeared.

**

In the galley, wheels of a different sort were turning. The part of Arthur's mind that saw patterns (sometimes, yes, through a faulty kaleidoscope) was in the process of joining up with the bit that solved problems (for certain values of 'solved'), spurred on by the very core of Arthur's Arthuriness: the need to help.

He'd been thinking about how brilliant the day had been so far.

Most days were brilliant ones, of course, especially the ones that involved flying. That day, though, with its unexpected road trip (being allowed to sing more than made up for the lack of any cars, let alone yellow ones) across Spain was just a little bit more brilliant than other days. It was like how Mum and Douglas and Skip were all his favorites, but that day, Skip was maybe a little more his favorite than the others. 

After all, he'd been brilliant and clever for almost the whole day. _And_ he'd sung along on Arthur's favorite in-the-car song.

Not many people had ever been willing to sing along with Arthur.

Normally, this train of thought would take Arthur to Little Souvenir Station, where he would look for things to make or keep to remember how especially brilliant the day had been. That day, though, the train had gone a slightly different way through the switches and ended up at another platform.

He wanted _Martin_ to remember how brilliant the day had been.

It was only a short jaunt from this to thinking about how Martin so seldom seemed to have brilliant days. Which was a shame, and Arthur felt a little selfish, because it didn't seem fair that he had so many when Skip had so few. 

But, and this was one of the most delightful revelations Arthur had ever had, most of his especially brilliant days had a couple of things in common. And one of the common traits was something that Martin didn't have.

A plan was born.

He wouldn't even mind flying home barefoot. In fact, he was looking forward to it.

**

It's infinitesimal, but she feels it anyway, this slightest of shifts in the balance. Not enough to distort the general shape of the universe, of course, but enough that she notices. That means the change affects (will affect, has affected: she's never been particularly bothered about tenses) one of the ones she's chosen. That was all right. Happened all the time: contrary to what some of the mortals believe, she isn't responsible for _everything_ that happens to them. She paints the mural, they fill in the details themselves. 

The weights in her scales fluctuate, but it all tends to work out in her longest of views. 

This particular change is exactly as light as a pair of socks and as heavy as the hand of fate.

Well, maybe not quite as heavy as her hand could sometimes be, but, 'and almost but not quite as heavy as the hand of fate' would have made for a far less effective description. 

And that isn't really the point, anyway. 

**

There was a strange smell emanating from Martin's flight bag.

It was a smell that Martin was fairly certain had not been there when he'd repacked the bag after the quite frankly dismal night spent trying to sleep squished into a couple of GERT-I's seats.

But, when he unzipped the duffle in the privacy of his own attic, there the smell was.

The most unsettling thing was that it wasn't even a particularly unpleasant smell.

It was, in fact, very nearly _pleasant_. Slightly floral and comfortingly generic.

And somehow familiar, though he would only place it at approximately 02:17 that night. ("GERT-I's hand soap!" he'll exclaim, suddenly wide awake.)

The smell seemed to be originating from a pair of socks, which, upon further investigation, proved to be not his. Alien footwear that had somehow made a home for themselves in his flight bag. 

"How? How? How did you --? I mean, _how_?" he asked them, but to no avail.

He was not to receive answers to any of his sock-related questions that day.

Martin drove to the airfield five mornings later, fully prepared for a day of standby and SOP's. He was not, however, prepared for the Mysterious Sock Conundrum to be explained. He was especially unprepared for the explanation to come from Arthur.

(His van was freshly mended: completely fixed, not as expensive as Martin had feared, and it had only taken three days longer than the mechanic had estimated. This may be ascribed to the power -- not omnipotence, mind, but power nonetheless -- of socks, but Martin wasn't to know that.)

Upon arrival in the MJN portacabin, Martin was greeted by an enthusiastically beaming Arthur. This in itself was not unusual. 

The content of the greeting, however…

"Hi, Skip! Are you wearing the socks?"

"I -- what? I'm wearing socks, yes, Arthur. Are you… not wearing socks?" he asked slowly, fearing that a celebration of some sort of Arthurish footwear holiday was imminent.

"I am!" To prove it, Arthur bent down and hopped about in an attempt to show off his socks, which, Martin noted, had little blue frogs printed on them.

"So I see," Martin spoke quickly, hoping to avert the catastrophic meeting of flimsy table and solid steward. "That's good, isn't it? Yes. Arthur, is Carolyn here?"

"Yep!" Arthur's voice was a bit muffled, for he was speaking mainly into his knee whilst rolling his trouser leg back down. "But she's on the phone."

"Oh."

"So, the socks? Are you wearing them? _Have_ you worn them? Did they work?"

"Arthur, what is with your sudden sock obsession? It's not something I should be concerned about, is it?"

"Did you not find them, Skip?" Arthur's face had fallen a bit, which, in Arthur's case, meant only that the grin had faded to a brightish smile. "I put them right on top."

And then, in a horrifying moment of clarity, it all made sense.

"The socks in my flight bag. They're… are they yours, Arthur?"

Arthur nodded. "They used to be. But they're yours now!"

"That's. Oh. But why?"

"Well, Skip," Arthur's face settled into explanatory mode, a look slightly more terrifying than 'thoughtful.' "I was thinking, because last week, when we had to drive to Albacete, well, it was brilliant, wasn't it?"

Martin's mind unleashed a Pandora's Box-type torrent of all the things about that day that had been decidedly _not_ brilliant.

But then, lurking at the bottom, came the memory of the other side of a low bridge and a faint voice, happily crowing, "Ki-kirri-ki!"

"I guess it wasn't completely awful, but what does that have to do with your socks?"

" _Your_ socks. Because those were the socks I was wearing that day, and it was brilliant, and I was thinking some more, and remembered that every day I've ever worn those socks has been, well…"

"Brilliant? But, Arthur, you think every day is brilliant."

"More brilliant, then. And I thought that was odd, because they're so boring -- just plain white with a green stripey thing at the toe." He shrugged. "But on all the best days, there they've been, right on my feet. So I thought you should have them, so you'd have more brilliant days." 

Something frightened and shivering poked its head out of the protective den it had built in Martin's chest. "Arthur. You gave me your lucky socks?"

(Narrative convention dictates that there be some kind of dawning-and-trumpets affair now that the l-word has actually been uttered. This is the place to imagine such a thing, if you're so inclined. Martin and his further questions are happy to wait a moment.)

Arthur's grin returned. "Yeah. I guess you could say that."

"That's… actually sort of sweet. Thank you, Arthur. But why do they smell like hand soap?"

"Like I said," Arthur started, as though the answer was completely obvious, "I'd been wearing them that day. And I didn't want to give you dirty socks: that wouldn't be very nice. So I washed them in the sink in the loo while you and Douglas were doing the post-flight checks."

**

A few days later, Douglas noticed that there was something green stuck into the braid on Martin's hat. Several green somethings, in fact.

(Unbeknownst to him, these signified a slight but logical escalation of Arthur's plan. His particular brand of logical deduction had led him to believe, quite correctly, that the unluckier Martin was, the luckier the people _around_ Martin were. This did not seem quite fair to Arthur, and so he had set about remedying the imbalance of the universe the only way he knew how.)

"Oh, Martin," Douglas queried, "has your hat somehow found itself in some manner of arboreal inconvenience?"

"Hmm?"

Douglas looked pointedly at the vegetation sprouting from said hat, then back to Martin, one eyebrow raised. 

"Oh. Those. Yes. Well. Of course I wouldn't wear them if this was a passenger flight, but it's just cargo today, and Arthur was so proud, and I just didn't have the heart to…"

Martin trailed off, his powers of speech no match for the strength of the skepticism lifting Douglas's eyebrow.

"They're clovers," he said quietly.

"So I see. But why, pray, is your hat also covered in tape? Is it, perhaps, to keep the clovers from escaping?"

Martin mumbled something inaudible.

"I'm sorry, Martin, I didn't quite catch that."

"He couldn't find any four-leaved clovers, so he picked a bunch of three-leaved ones and sort of…"

"Taped them together."

"Yes. A bit. Yes."

"I see."

Douglas's laughter lasted at least four minutes.

**

She enjoys watching the mortals play out their dramas in the space they amusingly call reality. It's endless entertainment, really, made even better by their reactions to the parts she knows she's played. 

It's not that she watches every move as it happens -- her attention span isn't quite long enough for that. She does, however, find the shapes of things, and flits forward to the points of time she knows will be blamed, for good or ill, on her: the moments that lead to her creation and re-creation. (And recreation, of course.)

She doesn't often get personally invested in the ones she chooses, but, if pressed (and there really was no one to press her, so the point was very nearly moot) she might have admitted that perhaps the Crieff boy was an extraordinary case.

But he wasn't the only one who tended toward the extraordinary.

She hadn't chosen the Shappey boy, but that mattered little: sometimes they chose themselves.

**  
 "Mum? Do you think a broom would do?"

"A broom? For what?"

"Instead of a chimney sweep."

"Arthur, dearest, we don't have a chimney."

"Yeah, I know. It's for Skip."

"I don't make a habit of frequenting Martin's disgraceful little hovel, but I'm fairly certain it's as flue-less as we are. What use, then, light of my life, do you imagine that Martin would have for a chimney sweep?"

"Seeing one's supposed to be lucky, Mum! I read about it on the internet. Except no one seems to work as a chimney sweep anymore. I called directory assistance and everything. There's a sort of giant hoover thing, which I suppose could work, but --"

"Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, I'm going to have to stop you right there. We are not renting a chimney-sweeping mechanism or device _of any kind_ in order to further your ridiculous, doomed-to-failure campaign to make Martin lucky. Do you understand?"

"Oh. Right. So I should stick to the broom then?"

**

Arthur's plan was going swimmingly. It even seemed to be working, at least a little.

Today would mark the crowning achievement. Socks, he knew from experience, would eventually wear out and get holes in the toes and things, and the clover, although a good idea at the time, didn't last forever once he'd picked it. The ones he'd found for Martin hadn't lasted more than a day before Skip had decided that it would be best to take them off of his hat.

This would last much longer.

It, or rather _she_ , was a compromise, yes, but he could see Mum's point.

There was no way Skip would be able to get a horse up the stairs to his flat. And there was no way Arthur was going to steal its shoes. That would be mean.

So, yesterday, he'd managed to convince Mum to take him on a bit of a shopping trip. She'd even, reluctantly, helped him make a list of things Martin would probably need.

A little stockpile of food, and some toys, and a brilliant-looking book about how to take care of what Arthur hoped would be a fantastic addition to Skip's life.

Her name was Bluebell, and she had soft brown and white fur, and long floppy ears. 

Arthur couldn't wait to see Skip's face when he met her. 

Said face was not quite as jubilant as Arthur was hoping. It was, frankly, more alarmed than joyful. And it was accompanied by one of Martin's more usual frightened yelps. Arthur felt a bit bad about that, but he seemed to be the only one: it drew a chuckle from Douglas, who was sitting across from Bluebell's carrying cage and had been surprisingly unmoved by her sudden appearance in the portakabin.

"What is that, and why is it sitting on my logbook?"

"Why, Martin," Douglas drawled, "that is a rabbit. Note the ears and twitching nose."

"Her name is Bluebell, Skip, and she's for you! I know the feet are supposed to be lucky, so I was thinking that if one foot's lucky, all four must be brilliant! But losing a foot doesn't seem very lucky for the rabbit, so I thought, if she gets to keep all four of her feet, and you keep _her_ , then everyone's lucky all around, right?"

Martin had been subjected to enough of Arthur's Arthurized good luck charms not to be surprised by this chain of logic. It even, frighteningly, made more than a little bit of sense.

And yet, his eyes went wide. "How can I possibly take care of it -- her? I'm -- we're -- gone so often, and it just doesn't seem like… I kill plants!" he half-sobbed. "I can't be trusted with something like a rabbit!"

Very gently, Arthur lifted Bluebell out of the carrier and put her into Martin's hands, sure that he'd change his mind once he actually held her. Sure enough, he instinctively cradled her in the crook of an arm and started scratching her behind the ears.

"If you like, Martin, you can consider her a sort of MJN mascot. And if you dare repeat that, well, I will allow your imagination to come up with a suitable retribution. I assure you, you will not know the hour at which I will choose to enact it."

This, of course, came from Carolyn, standing in the doorway to her office, arms crossed. She too had developed a certain fondness for Bluebell, but knew that Snoopadoop would never abide competition in the house. 

"I… okay. Yes. She is rather cute." He looked from Bluebell to Arthur. "Thank you. Really. No one's ever… well. No one's ever cared if I was lucky or not." 

**

This, of course, is not entirely true. 

However, Fortuna doesn't care quite enough to have any actual bearing on Martin's life. 

She leaves that to the people around him. It's the same with all she's ever chosen, and it's true that they have a greater effect on their acquaintances than most. Some take the bad luck and give out good -- as Martin Crieff does, and always will do -- and some go the other way. 

Some do one or the other without her ever choosing them.

Most people do a little bit of both.

But it's also true that the ones she chooses are themselves more affected by the people in their lives. 

It wouldn't be any fun otherwise.

Martin will never be what one might call lucky. But, thanks to some socks -- Arthur's lucky pair and a pair printed with little gold horseshoes Douglas buys him a few months later; some very nearly four-leaved clovers Martin had pressed in between pages of flight manual; a mirror, covered in gaffer tape ("So it doesn't ever break, Skip!"); and a small rabbit, it could be said that he began to be a little less unlucky.


End file.
